Wall Street Journal Profiles Andy Frank/Plug-In Partners
Jan 25, 2006 (From the CalCars-News archive)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113815056026555394.html

Coalition Turns On to 'Plug-In Hybrids'
Utilities, Localities, DaimlerChrysler Give Traction to Professor's
Drive For High Mileage
By JOHN J. FIALKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 25, 2006

DAVIS, Calif. -- In the 1950s, an aspiring Pasadena hot-rodder named
Andrew Frank shocked the competition by powering his 1936 Ford with a
Cadillac V-12 engine. "It had gobs of torque," he recalls.

In the 1990s, as a mechanical-engineering professor at the University
of California here, Dr. Frank produced another shocker. He yanked big
engines out of American cars and replaced them with electric motors
that worked in tandem with much smaller gasoline engines. He called
his new configuration the "plug-in hybrid" because it allowed
homeowners to recharge the car's batteries by plugging into an
electrical outlet.

Hybrid automobiles work with two engines. Auto makers have tinkered
with them since the early 1900s, but the cars didn't gain much
attention in the U.S. until Japanese companies began selling them in
1999. The current top seller is Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius; Americans
bought 205,790 of them last year. What Dr. Frank was proposing more
than 10 years ago, however, was a variation on the hybrid theme.

But Detroit auto makers ignored him. Japanese car makers, about to
market their own hybrids that didn't plug in, paid scant attention.
This year, however, as hybrids have gained in popularity amid high
gasoline prices, Dr. Frank, now 72 years old, is getting some traction:

A U.S. coalition led by electric utilities, sensing a way to gain
market share through vehicles that derive 90% of their power from
electricity and can recharge at night when power is plentiful and
cheap, kicked off a national campaign in Washington yesterday to push
auto makers to make plug-in hybrids.

Some cities, environmental groups and state pollution regulators have
joined this "Plug-in Partners" effort. They see plug-ins as a means
to meet tightening air-pollution standards and to use controls over
utilities as a way to clean up urban air.

DaimlerChrysler AG has turned a European delivery van, called the
Sprinter, into a prototype diesel-electric plug-in. Forty of the
vehicles will be tested over the next two years by a variety of U.S.
agencies and companies.

The plug-in campaign is intensifying just as car buyers and policy
makers are grasping for ways to ease the nation's energy problems.
When President Bush delivers his State of the Union address next
week, he is expected to tout alternative auto fuels, like ethanol, as
well as nuclear energy.

A key difference between plug-in hybrids and conventional hybrids is
that plug-ins have a bigger battery pack and can be designed to run a
passenger car on electricity for the first 60 miles -- about the
length of an average daily commute.

Dr. Frank estimates that if drivers regularly recharge their
batteries at home, plug-ins may get well over 100 miles per gallon.
By comparison, conventional hybrids must rely on gasoline-powered
engines to recharge their batteries and get between 40 and 60 mpg.

While running on electricity, the plug-in's fuel cost drops to 70
cents a gallon, or lower, Dr. Frank estimates.

Only a handful of experimental plug-ins are on the road. Some auto
makers say the vehicles are more vulnerable to wear and tear than
other hybrids. The biggest government spenders on auto research, the
federal government and the state of California, remain focused not on
hybrids but on fuel-cell-powered cars that use hydrogen.

"You should take a look and see at least what the federal government
is thinking," Dr. Frank told students in one of his graduate classes
recently, adding with a smile and a wink, "I don't agree with most of
what they have to say." In the basement of his school's engineering
building, Dr. Frank and his students tinker with sport-utility vehicles.

Their first move with a Ford Motor Co. Explorer was to rip up its
floor panels. "Most cars have plenty of underutilized space," Dr.
Frank explains, showing how he and the students filled that space
with batteries.

Then the students replaced the Explorer's big gasoline engine with a
fuel-sipper taken from a General Motors Corp. Saturn and a
200-horsepower electric motor. Power from the two engines, which
operate on the same drive shaft, is controlled by a continuously
variable transmission, a gearless, computer-controlled device. Dr.
Frank estimates that the car's weight remains about the same. The
batteries he puts in make it heavier, but his engines and
transmissions are lighter than the ones he removes.

Dr. Frank's hybrids have enough electric power to run for the first
60 miles; then, computers turn on the gasoline engine to help run the
car and keep the batteries charged. Dr. Frank's students have
discovered that even with six of them riding in the Explorer, it
could still "burn rubber."

That was the Explorer's downfall last year in an annual contest held
by the Department of Energy to see which American university could
build the most efficient-running car. Dr. Frank's students were
showing off the car's acceleration in the parking lot before the
contest, when it died. "We broke the motor," he explains.

In June, U.C. Davis will try again with a Chevrolet Equinox, powered
by a relatively tiny Toyota Prius gasoline engine and electric
e

ment similar to that in the Explorer. To demonstrate that cars
can be weaned almost entirely from fossil fuel, Dr. Frank's students
plan to run the gasoline engine mainly on ethanol made from corn.
They are designing a tent with solar panels that can be used to
recharge the batteries.

Utilities are drawn to the idea of a car that plugs in at home. The
Electric Power Research Institute, which is financed by utilities, is
sponsoring DaimlerChrysler's experiment with plug-in delivery vans.
The project is being shepherded one of Dr. Frank's former students,
Mark Duvall, who remembers working long nights modifying cars in the
professor's lab. "He was a complete master of giving you enough rope
to hang yourself," Mr. Duvall says.

Critics say the plug-in's weak point may be its batteries, which
could burn out if power is drawn up and down frequently. Dr. Frank
says recent experiments with electric cars by Toyota and GM have
developed batteries that can stand the strain.

Dan Benjamin, a transportation analyst for ABI Research, an Oyster
Bay, N.Y., market-research firm, says the battery problem means
plug-ins will appear first as commercial vehicles: "Stop-and-go city
driving really takes advantage of this technology."

Bill Kwong, a spokesman for Toyota, says the company doesn't
encourage buyers of its hybrids to use kits, made by some companies,
that convert them into plug-ins, since "it cycles the batteries down
way too deeply and shortens the life of the batteries." For that
reason, he says Toyota isn't working on a plug-in hybrid.

Others think the car will be too expensive. It costs Dr. Frank about
$100,000 to customize a car. But he estimates that made in volume,
his adjustments would raise the cost of a car by a more affordable
25%. He says most plug-in parts could be made by a well-equipped machine shop.

The plug-in feature will add from $4,000 to $6,000 to the cost of a
car, he calculates, noting "that's what some people pay for a
sunroof, leather seats and a fancy navigation system."

Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@...